About Me

When not nosing, tasting, drinking and reading about malt whisky, I own one of Israel's premiere boutique coaching practices, specializing in small businesses and executive teams.
Trained in the law, I was an international law attorney and took part in Israel's peace negotiations with the Palestinians, as well as representing my country at the UN for parts of the negotiations on the implementation of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Later I was appointed to the military bench.
My favorite thing, other than whisky, is teaching.
You can contact me through the social media buttons above or by email: michael(at)maltandoak.com, replacing the (at) with an @.

Statement of Integrity and Guidelines

Malt and Oak is an independent whisky blog, offering my own views, opinions and news from the world of malt whisky.
These are my guidelines:

1. All whisky reviews published are of whiskies I have personally tasted and noted. Guest bloggers only write about their own personal tastings.

2. With the exception of official whisky samples, I accept no consideration whatsoever from any distillery, bottler, distributor, drink company or store for my opinions.

3. I maintain strict impartiality and objectivity in tasting all whiskies, not least when tasting official samples. Any review of official whisky samples sent to me will be so noted in the post.

4. I will accept invitations to tastings, events and official visits, and full disclosure will be made on any tasting notes and articles resulting from these events or visits.

5. Any sample received over 30 ml in volume is shared with fellow whisky bloggers. In any event, no sample larger than 100 ml will be accepted.

6. No advertisements promoting specific brands will be accepted.

7. I will answer any inquiry by my readers as quickly and as fully as possible.

8. Should I give a link purchase the reviewed whisky, it will be given free of any commercial interest. The link given will always point to cheapest selling price I found on the web. No commission is paid, nor any other consideration given, for such link.

9. As of July 2017, I serve as Douglas Laing’s Israel brand ambassasdor. As such, I will obviously not be posting reviews of Douglas Laing products.

Kilchoman 2010 TWE Exclusive PX Finish Cask 579/2010 (58.3%)

Kilchoman have adopted, in their 10 year history, a pretty strict policy on selling casks. They essentially serve as their own independent bottler, and have numerous expressions out there for specialty retailers, but very few independently bottled single casks. This is, essentially, the strategy taken by Billy Walker’s BenRiach.

The few independent bottlings that you will find out there will most likely be part of a specific series or one that reaches a very specific crowd. Those include the Scotch Malt Whisky Society, who designated Kilchoman with number 129, and has so far bottled seven casks at strengths ranging from 58.9% to 64.5% at ages ranging from four to six years. With the SMWS being the exception, other bottlers only got casks to bottle in a series, be it Specialty Drinks’ Elements of Islay, Master of Malt’s Single Cask Series and That Boutique-y Whisky Company with its comic book labels and horror film prices, or the Single Cask Nation series from the Jewish Whisky Company. Alongside these 11 independent casks bottled outside of the distillery’s branding, Whiskybase lists 291 distillery bottlings, and a quick browse through the list will indicate most of these as being “for” a bottler, a market or an event.

Photo Credit: kilchomandistillery.com/

Founded in 2005, the distillery is a rather small operation, producing less than 200,000 liters per year. In fact, Kilchoman pride themselves on being a farm distillery, located on Rockside Farm and using locally grown and malted barley for about 25% of the production. Somewhat curiously, the locally grown and internally malted barley is far less peated than the malt bought from Port Ellen (only 10-25 ppm, as opposed to the 50 ppm from Port Ellen). Thus, the 100% Islay bottlings are actually far less peated than the regular bottlings coming out of the distillery.

We would, of course, be remiss not to mention the sad passing of John MacLellan in late March. Before coming to Kilchoman, he managed Bunnahabhain, where he worked for 21 years. John came over to manage Kilchoman in 2010, and basically brought the distillery’s core range into being, and his signature adorns each bottle of Kilchoman. May he rest in peace.